Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Saturday Night at the Baths (1975)

It’s interesting to read
the spectrum of opinions people have expressed online about Saturday Night at the Baths, a fairly
innocuous melodrama concerning gay life in New York City circa the mid-’70s.
Some fans recall embracing the film at the time of its release because so few
movies offered positive gay imagery, while others relish the piece as a time
capsule because much of the picture was shot inside the Continental Baths, a
mecca for gay men in Greenwich Village back in the day. Yet others pillory the film as
predictable and timid, both fair charges, while still more dismiss the picture
as an advertisement for the Continental. That charge also has some
validity, seeing as how Steve Ostrow, who owned the Continental, produced the
picture and plays himself in a small supporting role. According to this movie’s
vision of the Continental, Ostrow’s establishment was a magical place where
nothing bad or untoward ever happened. Even the notion of cruising receives
little more than a mention, despite casual hookups being a significant part of
gay-bathhouse culture. So with all these differing takes, which interpretation seems
most accurate? Weirdly, all of them.

On its surface, the picture is a gentle
story about a young man coming to grips with a complicated sexual identity,
since a job playing piano at the Continental forces him to consider
long-suppressed homosexual yearnings. Underneath, Saturday Night at the Baths is an infomercial—don’t bother looking
for any suggestions of peer pressure, prostitution, or sexual or substance abuse.
Yet because some folks may have genuinely experienced the Continental as an
idyllic place, the rose-colored portrayal could be at least partially accurate.

In any event, the story’s protagonist is Michael (Robert Aberdeen), a skinny
musician from Montana who lands a job at the Continental. The club’s manager,
Scotti (Don Scotti), takes an interest in Michael very quickly, putting the
moves on the pianist and then backing off when Michael says he’s straight. Sure
enough, Michael lives with open-minded Tracy (Ellen Sheppard), though she
plainly suspects there’s more to her lover’s gender identity than even he
realizes. And so it goes from there. Spending time with Scotti compels Michael
to move past homophobia, while also demonstrating to the audience that, gosh
darn it, gay men are people, too. If it’s possible to imagine a movie that
feels as earnest as an after-school special while also featuring drag queens,
full-frontal nudity, and gyrating dancers wearing gold-lamé banana hammocks,
then you’ve got a sense of what to expect from Saturday Night at the Baths.